Learners throughout the Western Cape have been getting high. They have been experiencing the natural heady rush of one of the most ancient art forms: kite-flying.
The annual Schools’ Kite Competition 2002 is a joint project of the Cape Mental Health Society, the Western Cape Department of Education Safe Schools project and corporate partner Frutus. Now into its ninth year this festival has really taken off. This year more than 65 primary and special-needs schools – a record number – entered.
‘The response has been so encouraging,” says Liezel King, of the Cape Mental Health Society. ‘During troubling times of increased substance abuse and suicides among teenagers, this festival encourages learners to explore sharing, acceptance and cooperation – the key elements for healthy communities and good mental health.”
Each of the schools was provided with a kite-making kit with blank kite skins, on which they created designs based on the theme ‘Share the sky, together we fly” .
‘The results were spectacular,” says Safe Schools coordinator Brian Jeftha, who was one of the judges. ‘The standard was so good that it was extremely difficult to choose the best.”
But the competition constituted only a small aspect of the revelry. From scuba divers and penguins to aerofoils and flying dragons, kites crowded the sky. Most of them were the proud products of more than 700 learners – some of whom had never experienced the joys of a carefree childhood, let alone flown a kite before.
Take Zola Simenyaka, for example. The diminutive, doe-eyed 10-year-old recently made headlines in a Cape Town newspaper when she was discovered at a local library trying to educate herself. Now a Grade 5 pupil at Crystal House in Athlone – a school for learners with special educational needs – Seminyaka never even knew what a kite was. For the competition she designed an angel that – along with the designs of her classmates – will be used to illustrate Christmas cards.
‘The children at Crystal House have been trapped in a cycle of poverty,” explain art teachers Marilyn Groge and Jackie Cloete. ‘This project has proved to be a wonderful bonding experience and confidence booster.”
But it hasn’t simply been about creative therapy either. With the world still abuzz from the first Afronaut in space, what better way to explain a complex concept like aerodynamics than through kite-flying?
‘One of the benefits of outcomes-based education is that understanding and flexibility are as important as content,” says educator Maria Louw. ‘We can take an activity like flying a kite and adapt it to other subjects, like science and physics, to demonstrate how aerodynamics operates.”
In 1899 the Wright brothers developed their theories for the control of an aircraft by building a kite to verify their ideas.
Whether it’s a plane, a space ship or a kite, the laws of aerodynamics are the same. So when someone tells somebody to ‘go fly a kite” it shouldn’t necessarily be regarded as an insult , but as an invitation to a healthy learning experience.
Winners
Primary school category
First: Wynberg Girls’ Junior School, Wynberg
Second: Balvenie Primary School, Matroosfontein, Elsies River
Third: Morgenson Primary School, Hanover Park
Special school category
First: Oasis School for Learners with Special Educational Needs, Belhar
Second: Vera School for Autistic Learners, Rondebosch East
Third: Mary Harding School, Athlone